The modern reliance on electronic devices for conducting daily transactions has resulted in growing concern regarding device security. For example, in the course of daily use electronic devices may receive, store, transmit, confidential data such as authentication data, account access data, account numbers, personal identification data, residence data, etc. This type of data may be useful to persons with questionable intentions such as identity theft, gaining unauthorized access to accounts, deriving personal or commercial advantage through the acquisition of confidential data, etc. A variety of software and/or hardware-based protective measures have been devised to protect against these attacks. Software-based virus and/or firewall protection may defend against common computer viruses, hoaxes, Trojan horses, etc. However, these protective measures may be limited to operating at the same privilege level as the operating system (OS) in a device. The ingenuity of attackers has allowed them to circumvent the defenses by, for example, introducing malicious software (e.g., malware) much earlier in the boot process of a device. This variety of malware (e.g., a rootkit) may attack a device when in a vulnerable state, and thus may be able to incorporate itself into the operational code of the device in a manner granting high privilege, and thus protection from lower privilege defenses.
To protect against low level attacks, developers have begun to incorporate protection into the hardware of the device. For example, the boot process may be protected via trusted activities in which known-good programs are equipped to verify the integrity of later-loaded software. In addition, processors and processing chipsets may be equipped with encryption features that may protect applications and data while stored in memory. The contents of the data may be protected by encryption, and in some instances the integrity of the encrypted data may further be verifiable prior to decryption to ensure that an attacker did not alter the encrypted data. While the benefits of such protections are apparent, each advancement in protection may be accompanied by a new form of attack. For example, existing hardware protection may not be tailored to combat attacks wherein an attacker may physically access hardware and/or alter hardware operation in a device.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.